Norwegian
Forerunners Among the Early Mormons
by William Mulder (Volume 19: Page 46)

The earliest Scandinavian converts
to Mormonism were won, not in Europe, but in the United States
among the Norwegian immigrants in the early settlements at Fox
River in Illinois, Sugar Creek in Iowa, and Koshkonong in Wisconsin
Territory, all within missionary striking distance of Nauvoo,
the rising Mormon capital of the 1840’s and head quarters of
the magnetic Yankee prophet, Joseph Smith. One of Smith’s traveling
elders, George P. Dykes, first found these converts during his
tireless preaching up and down the country. In March, 1842,
he visited the Fox River settlement in La Salle County and within
a month secured a following of some distinction: a number of
respected Haugean lay leaders like Ole Heier, “a winning personality
and gifted speaker” who in Telemarken had been considered a
pious reader; the schoolteacher Jørgen Pedersen; Endre
Dahl, one of the famous “sloopfolk” of 1825 and a first settler
at Fox River; and another slooper, Gudmund Haugaas from Stavanger,
whom Dykes ordained an elder and described in a letter to Joseph
Smith as “a man of strong mind, and well skilled in the scriptures;
he can preach in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, having an understanding
of their languages.” Dykes’s description indicated that among
these men the Prophet hoped to recruit missionaries for Scandinavia
who would induce their countrymen to settle in and around Nauvoo
to strengthen Zion, as converts from the British Isles were
already doing. {1} Eighteen-year-old Knud Peterson [47] of Hardanger,
an immigrant of 1837, better known as Canute, was baptized soon
afterward, along with his widowed mother and “two best friends
and comrades, Swen and John Jacobs.” Canute remembered Dykes
as a very able man: “Many of our most intelligent men, including
the minister, came to his meetings and opposed him, but none
were successful in argument against him, or the doctrine he
was advocating.” Another convert-Aagaata Sondra Ystensdatter,
eighteen, an immigrant of 1837 from Telemarken, was, as Ellen
Sanders Kimball, wife of Brigham Young’s counselor Heber C.
Kimball, to be one of three women included in the first company
of Mormon pioneers to enter Salt Lake Valley in 1847. {2}

In May, 1843, Dykes wrote the Prophet Joseph Smith, reviewing
the year’s work: the La Salle congregation numbered fifty-eight
“in good standing,” with Ole Heier presiding. In January, 1843,
Gudmund Haugaas and J. R. Anderson had spent three weeks among
the Norwegians in Lee County, Iowa, and had baptized ten, notably
Erik G. M. Hogan and his family, who had come from Telemarken
on the same ship with the Petersons. Haugaas, after his return
to Fox River, had set out again, this time accompanied by Ole
Heier, to visit “a large body from Norway” in Wisconsin Territory,
where, said Dykes, “they have laid the foundation of a great
work to all appearance. There are now fifty-seven members of
the church from Norway and the time is not far distant when
the saying of Micah 4: 2 will be fulfilled.” {3} [48]

The Prophet shared this optimism. When the Norwegian Saints
at Fox River sent Endre Dahl to Nauvoo with one hundred head
of sheep and cattle and “a little money” as a contribution toward
building the temple, Dahl met Joseph Smith on the street; the
Prophet invited Dahl to come home with him, but Dahl protested
that he was only en ganske like frem nordmann (a very simple
Norwegian), unworthy to enter a prophet’s dwelling. Smith, who
finally prevailed on Dahl to accompany him, was much impressed.
He told Apostle George A. Smith soon afterward that the Scandinavians
would in time come to play a significant role in the church.
{4}

Dahl must have returned to Fox River big with news of this meeting.
Like so many converts, the Norwegians found the Prophet a magnetic
personality; they often visited Nauvoo simply to lay eyes on
him or hear him preach in a favorite grove. Young Goudy Hogan,
one of the converts from Sugar Creek just across the Mississippi
from Nauvoo, went frequently with his father, Erik. He sat one
day on the boards of a temporary outdoor platform, from which
Smith was speaking, close enough to touch him and remembered
the light linen coat the Prophet wore with the small holes in
the elbows. Goudy heard him declare that both North and South
America would become Mount Zion, that the Constitution of the
United States would hang “on a single untwisted thread,” and
that the Latter-day Saints would save it. Goudy remembered that
once some young men were sparking girls at the back of the congregation,
disturbing the meeting with their loud talk; the Prophet rebuked
them: they should wait, go home, and talk to their “young ladies”
with the consent of their parents. He was a very human man for
all his devoutness. Goudy wished that all those friends and
relatives who had made such a [49] funeral of his family’s departure
from Norway a few years back could only see the Prophet and
his beautiful city. {5}

Goudy and those of his countrymen who were visiting Nauvoo in
1844 might well have encountered its two resident Scandinavians-the
Dane Hans Christian Hansen and the Swede John Erik Forsgren,
their nations’ lone representatives in the latter-day Zion.
Forsgren and Hansen, both sailors, had embraced Mormonism in
Boston in the early 1840’s, Hans Christian had written the news
of his conversion to Copenhagen to his younger brother Peter
Ole, who, finding no Mormons in Denmark, had set out for America
at once; Hans Christian went to Boston to meet him, and invited
him to come on to Nauvoo to see a real prophet. Peter Ole arrived
in 1845 and set to work on a Danish translation of the Book
of Mormon, while Hans Christian’s popular fiddle frequently
entertained the Saints. {6}

With the British mission, opened in 1837, already a beginning
of missionary work abroad, Joseph Smith saw in these young Nordics
the chance for expanding Mormonism to the continent. His gospel,
the seed, had to be carried to the nations, and here were the
sowers. But his death by violence in June, 1844, cut short such
plans. Peter 0. Hansen and John E. Forsgren were indeed to be
the first to carry Mormonism to their homelands, but only after
the Prophet’s dream had been brought west to the mountains and
they had followed it. The expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo
saw Forsgren march to California with the Mormon battalion in
1846, Hans Christian Hansen with the vanguard detachment of
pioneers who entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and Peter
Ole following soon after. Only a handful of the Norwegian converts
from the Illinois and Iowa [50] settlements were to go west,
a dearly bought remnant of Mormonism’s first adventure among
the Scandinavians, but they were men like Erik Hogan and Canute
Peterson and Endre Dahl, seed corn for the great growth to come.
In their future labors, their recollection of Nauvoo and of
the Prophet’s personal ministry was to provide a lasting and
powerful motivation.

Lutheran leaders, meanwhile, were by no means happy at Mormonism’s
inroads among settlers whose ties with the mother church were
already lamentably loose. Pastor J. W. C. Dietrichson, bitter
that sects and schisms were destroying Lutheran unity, wrote
agitated letters to Norway deploring Mormon activity. He was
distressed that by 1845 nearly a hundred and fifty Norwegians
in the western settlements- some eighty in the Fox River colony
alone-had accepted the Mormon delusion. When Gudmund Haugaas
and Canute Peterson went to Koshkonong late in 1844, Dietrichson
entertained them at his home but also took occasion publicly
to oppose their millennial doctrine. At Fox River the next spring
Dietrichson was bold enough to call a meeting of his own, attacking
Mormon elders who had preached to his Norwegians from an ox-drawn
wagon. Johan R. Reiersen, prime mover of the early emigration
from Norway, called the Sugar Creek converts “our credulous
and simple country men.” Ole Andrewson of the American Home
Missionary Society, feeling himself caught between the two extremes
of the state church and of American revivalism, wrote that Mormonism
and fanaticism left the Fox River region like a prairie swept
by fire. And at Pine Lake, Wisconsin, Bishop Gustaf Unonius
was equally critical: he regretted Fredrika Bremer’s “sympathy
for . . . Shakers, women’s-rights associations, yes, even Mormonism”
which “judicious Americans regard as more or less noxious weeds
sown by the enemy into good ground.” It was a judgment the Mormons
were used to. {7} [51]

Mormon activity among the Norwegians established a pattern that
was to prevail again years later in Scandinavia itself: American
elders initiated what became a movement with its own momentum,
though always centrally directed. The proselytes themselves
became the most effective missionaries and able leaders of local
congregations, while the brethren on circuit from Nauvoo visited
them frequently: Wilford Woodruff, who was one day to lead the
whole church and to issue the famous manifesto discontinuing
polygamy; George A. Smith, future church historian, who at one
time spoke on “general [Joseph J Smith the smartest man in the
U. S. and best calculated to fill the presidential chair,” which
was applauded by the assembly; G. E. Deuel, who had made a preaching
tour of New York, Canada, and Michigan- all spoke in the “Norwegian
settlement,” as they described Fox River. {8}

But “general Smith” was in trouble, wanted by Missouri on old
charges of treason and harassed by apostates and anti-Mormons
in Illinois because of his demagoguery. In June, 1844, the Fox
River Saints heard that he planned to escape to the West. He
had crossed the Mississippi on the twenty-second and Orrin P.
Rockwell, “Old Port,” was seeking horses. Canute Peterson responded
gladly and rode swiftly toward Nauvoo, only to learn on the
way that the Prophet had returned and given himself into the
hands of his enemies. On the twenty-seventh the Prophet and
his brother, Hyrum the Patriarch, were shot down by a mob. Goudy
Hogan, fourteen, out picking wild strawberries, wept at the
news; with his father he hurried across the river to the city
to see the bodies returned from Carthage. {9}

In the ensuing contest within the church for the Prophet’s mantle,
the strong man Brigham Young, president of the Council of Twelve,
visited the outlying congregations of the [52] Saints in quick
succession, for a time magnetizing the pieces of Joseph Smith’s
kingdom and holding it together. Late in October of the martyr
year (1844), he went north 144 miles to Fox River. Parley P.
Pratt, “Archer of Paradise,” author of the persuasive Voice
of Warning which gave so many converts their picture of the
ideal Zion, had a farm within a day’s ride of the settlement
and went with Brigham Young, as did Heber C. Kimball and Lorenzo
D. Young-a good representation of the Twelve, betokening important
business. After a conference at nearby Ottawa, Illinois, they
visited the Norwegian branch at Fox River on the twenty-third,
“taught the principles of the Gospel to them,” appointed George
P. Dykes, their old familiar, to preside over them and the Saints
in the vicinity, and ordained Reuben Miller bishop. Then, from
Gudmund Haugaas and Jacob Anderson they bought a hundred acres
of land about nine miles northeast of Ottawa, laid out a city
dedicated to the Lord, and called it Norway. They set aside
ten acres for a temple “upon a high and very beautiful spot,”
selected sites for a “tithing house” and other public buildings,
even driving the southeast corner stake for a meetinghouse or
“tabernacle.” {10} Canute Peterson bought a lot near the temple
site for forty dollars, which went to pay the county surveyor.
Peterson heard Brigham Young say that the new settlement would
be “a gathering place for the Scandinavian people, and that
they would build the temple on the site selected . . . that
in [53] this temple they would have the privilege of giving
and receiving the Endowments in their own language.” {11} Despite
Smith’s martyrdom, Zion’s tent, it seemed, was lengthening her
cords and strengthening her stakes. High priest Gudmund Haugaas,
it was planned, would soon be sent abroad to begin the gathering
to a Scandinavian center in Zion.

But the Mormons were torn by dissension within and the mounting
threat of violence without. By the spring of 1845 Brigham Young
was assembling the Saints from the surrounding country at Nauvoo
to prepare for no one knew exactly what. Canute Peterson at
Fox River remembered “exciting rumors” that the Saints would
leave the city and go to the Rocky Mountains. Anxious to receive
his temple endowments before such an evacuation took place,
Canute and a small company from Fox River made a wagon journey
down to Nauvoo in mid-January, 1846, where he saw “preparations
for the great exodus going on both night and day.” He offered
his help for the trek, but the brethren advised him to remain
with his invalid mother. {12}

In the Iowa settlement across the river, Erik Hogan’s family
had seen the troubles coming. Goudy Hogan remembered how in
his neighborhood anything amiss was always laid to the Mormons.
After robberies, warrants were always made out to search Mormon
houses, and at school, where he was the only Mormon boy, he
was often called “Joe Smith.” He said, “There was considerable
talk in Nauvoo and all around privately that the Saints would
have to move and go into the wilderness in order to have peace.”
{13} In February Goudy Hogan saw the first of the evacués
cross the frozen Mississippi and camp along Sugar Creek in the
snow, not two miles from his father’s farm; he was to remember
how the family gave what they could and how his father, enraged
at the inhumane treatment suffered by the [54] Mormons, threw
in his lot with the “Camp of Israel.” He traded his grubbed
land with its fine Norwegian granary for a yoke of cattle and
an old wagon, the best bargain he could get because so many
in and around Nauvoo were selling out. In April, in a heavy
rain that mired everyone down, the Hogans joined the exodus.
Goudy wanted to enlist in the Mormon battalion being mustered
at Mount Pisgah, but his father thought that at sixteen he was
too young.

The family spent the winter of 1846-47 at Plum Hollow, Iowa,
eight miles east of the Missouri River, on whose banks Brigham
Young had established winter quarters. They cut wild hay and
built a log house and a corral. Goudy hunted deer and collected
wild honey. Father Erik went down to Missouri with a team and
hauled back food that he had obtained in trade for his broadcloth
suit; in the spring he let Heber Kimball and his Norwegian wife
Ellen take the family’s work horse for the trek west while he
remained behind to clear and fence fifteen acres and raise corn,
which he was unable to sell even at ten cents a bushel. Goudy
meanwhile went down to Fort Kearney and hired out as a teamster
for four months at twenty dollars a month; he was the only Mormon,
he remembered, among twenty-three hands. He earned enough to
outfit the family for the journey west. In the spring of 1848
Erik traded his Plum Hollow holding with George P. Dykes, who
was back from his battalion duty and said he had a house in
“the fort” in the infant settlement at Salt Lake. But when the
Hogans arrived there in September they found no house belonging
to “said Dykes.” They went north a few miles instead, to Sessions’
Settlement; because of their labors it was soon rechristened
Bountiful. In their log house, because it was the largest, they
and their Yankee neighbors held meetings and thanked the Lord
for their deliverance.

In the fall of 1849 Erik and Goudy beefed one of the family’s
work oxen and made moccasins of the hide; and Goudy was able
to sell his “fine boots,” for a bushel and a [55] half of wheat
seed, to their old Nauvoo acquaintance John Forsgren, who was
about to leave on a mission to Scandinavia. The grasshoppers
cleaned out the hoped-for crop, and after Goudy and his sister
Caroline had gleaned what was left, using the family butcher
knife for a scythe, Goudy joined a company of “Mormon boys”
headed for the gold fields with Brigham Young’s blessing. In
a year he was back, in time to see his father off on a mission
to Norway with Canute Peterson. And in a few years, when the
Knut Nelsons arrived from Denmark and Goudy took the three daughters
to wife, he began to see that, like the branches of Jacob’s
vine, his father’s family was running over the wall and becoming
fruitful in its new home-a vision his twenty-five children and
his hardy pioneering in three Deseret communities would eventually
confirm. It was a foretaste of experiences awaiting all the
Scandinavians who followed the forerunners to Zion.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian congregation at Fox River, to which
Canute returned after his Nauvoo visit in January, 1846, was
thrown into confusion by the whirlwind visitations and strident
claims of the quick-tongued James J. Strang. The Twelve, he
said, were subject to the first presidency, and Strang was the
president and true successor. He vigorously opposed the plan
of Brigham Young and the Twelve to move the Saints west. Operating
out of Voree, Wisconsin, Strang proselyted the Fox River region
during December and January, 1845-46. He found Bishop Miller
very much “bound up with the rule and authority of the Twelve”
and ready to organize a company of one hundred families to rendezvous
at Ottawa “and emigrate to unknown regions in the west under
the direction of the Twelve to found there in connection with
twenty-four other companies a New Empire to be governed by priestly
authority.” {14} Miller had called “an extensive meeting” of
the “brethren” at the [56] Norwegian settlement on the first
day of January to set the company in order. Strang found they
were “generally making great efforts” to start as soon as possible
and were “very near unanimous in favor of going.” On the twentieth
Strang countered by meeting with “about one hundred brethren
and sisters, mostly Norwegians” who “seemed to receive his testimony.”
He was heard with attention, opposed with warmth, but managed
to unsettle most. Miller vacillated. Ole Heier and Gudmund Haugaas
were won over. “Hougus himself and the brethren generally were
so well persuaded of the strength of our positions that three
loads of them went to Nauvoo to call on the Twelve to justify
their position and show them the first Presidency.” Strang believed
his winter’s forays had brought “some three hundred breathren
[sic] and sisters back to the true order of the Church . . .
saving them from that most hopeless undertaking the Emigration
to the western wilds.” {15}

The roll call of the “Saints assembled in Conference at Norway,
LaSalle Co. Ill.” the following April revealed the extent of
Strang’s influence among the Norwegians: stalwarts like Gudmund
Haugaas, Endre Dahl, Ole Heier, Shure Olson, and a score of
“high priests and elders” pledged them selves to support Strang
and “labor faithfully in the up-building of the Church and Kingdom
of God as he hath revealed it.” Haugaas was ordained an apostle
“to open the gospel to the nation of Norway,” together with
five others. Had they gone, as Strangites, they would have anticipated
Brigham Young’s emissaries to Scandinavia by four years. {16}
[57]

There was no mission; loyalties to the cantankerous Strang were
short-lived, and there was a falling away instead. In July,
Louisa Sanger of nearby Ottawa, troubled over the disaffection
of Reuben Miller, wrote Strang: “These are indeed trying times
and I fear that but few will be able to endure. . . . The Norwegian
brethren are down very low.

Goodman is entirely off. . . . Ole Las [sic] maintained his
integrity until he saw Buzzard [Philip Busard] but now I hear
he is clean down and if he falls what can we hope for the rest?”
Haugaas at one time almost decided to go west but joined the
reorganization directed by Joseph Smith III, the son of the
Prophet, who in the 1850’s united many splinter groups and individuals
adrift around Nauvoo following the Brighamite exodus. Smith
remembered “Goodman Hougas, Christian Hayer, Hans Hayer, and
Oliver Hayer, with their families,” as a “band of thrifty, industrious
farmers . . . occupying in one of the richest localities in
the state of Illinois” whose union with his church added considerable
strength. The Norway branch remained captive to the reorganization;
a son succeeded Gudmund Haugaas as its minister and, some fifty
years after its planting by Brig ham Young, could be found preaching
there to a congregation of about 140. Ole Heier, who for a few
months served the Strangites as “presiding High Priest over
the district of North, Eastern [sic] Illinois,” finally joined
the close-communion Baptists. He had visited Nauvoo, a son recalled,
during preparations for the evacuation, but “was one of the
first to get his eyes open to the terrible work of the church
he had espoused.” Shure Olson and Endre Dahl, the slooper-Dahl
perhaps remembering his visit with the Prophet- recovered themselves
and went west: Shure, a skilled cabinetmaker, to help build
the organ in the great tabernacle; Endre, who was entered in
Utah Territory’s first census in 1850 as “Andrew Dolle, 60,
Farmer,” to sire a grandson who would sit in the state’s constitutional
convention.” {17} [58]

Canute Peterson, like the Hogans at Sugar Creek, had made up
his mind to go west when the chance came, and he remained unmoved
by the contrary winds of doctrine at Fox River. While others
blew hot and cold, he hired out in the spring and summer of
1846, breaking prairie and threshing grain. In 1847, with a
good team which he later traded for forty acres of land, he
freighted between Ottawa and Chicago. In 1848 he hauled lumber
for an Ottawa sawmill. When his mother died, he recalled, “My
desire to gather with the Saints in Utah became stronger and
stronger and I gradually made the necessary preparations.” {18}

Brigham Young meanwhile had not forgotten the Fox River Saints.
In December, 1847, he sent George W. Bratten from Council Bluffs
to visit the Norwegian settlement. “I arrived at Norway Jan.
10, 1848 and on the 12th had a large and very attentive congregation
in a school house.” The “great Erick Janson Prophet of Sweden”
happened to be there at the same time and in a morning service
in the same schoolhouse declared “the Mormons were most particularly
damned.” Bratten disposed of Janson by calling on Gudmund Haugaas,
still in the fold, to answer him in his own language and challenge
him to public debate. He said, “The house was crowded we had
a most excellent meeting but no Prophet of Sweden.” Bratten
reorganized the branch; he received “eight dollars and some
cents” and a pledge from twenty members-Canute Peterson and
Gudmund Haugaas among them-that they “would support the Twelve
and go to the west.” {19} [59]

A year later, on April 18, 1849, twenty-two Norwegians left
Fox River in six wagons, most of them the ones who had pledged
Bratten their support, with the notable exception of Gudmund
Haugaas. A valuable addition, from Canute Peterson’s point of
view, was “Sister Sarah Ann Nelson,” daughter of the slooper
Cornelius Nelson Hersdal, and the second Norwegian child born
in America. She had been teaching English in the settlement
school to students twenty to forty years old. Canute married
her July 2 in camp a few miles east of Kanesville. {20}

After passing through Burlington, Iowa-which they found deserted
except for the ferrymen and a few guards, and with the streets
and porches strewn with new lime in the wake of a cholera epidemic-the
company joined Apostle Ezra Taft Benson’s camp at Kanesville
on the east bank of the Missouri River and became known in Mormon
history as the Norwegian Company. In Apostle George A. Smith’s
camp, also on the grounds, was a group of Welsh Saints under
Captain Dan Jones. From Kanesville the companies traveled together,
producing a mingling of tongues typical of Mormon migration.
“We are composed of Yankees, English, Welsh, Norwegian, etc.,”
wrote Smith, “yet we are one, although of different dialects
and nations.” At Elkhorn River young Canute Peterson and his
friend Ira Sabe won every one’s admiration when they volunteered
to swim a rope to the ferry on the other side; the stream was
dangerously swollen by heavy rains. “After this,” said Canute,
“when there was any swimming to be done, I was generally asked
to do it, and became quite popular.” And modestly he admitted
that he was also “a lucky hunter.” At Independence Rock the
party was met by brethren from the Salt Lake Valley who brought
assistance in the form of cattle and wagons. Brother Thomas
E. Ricks was assigned to help the Norwegians. He won their love
and confidence, which, Canute remarked fifty years later, “he
has to this day.” It forecast [60] a characteristic relationship
that existed among the Mormons between Yankee settlers and Scandinavian
immigrants.” {21}

On October 25, after battling waist-deep snows in the mountains,
the company reached the valley. Canute Peterson, Shure Olson,
Christian Heier, and the Jacobs brothers were so eager to see
“the great Mormon city” that they “went up about the Temple
Block and other places. We found the city to be more than we
had expected and so were agreeably surprised.” {22} Three or
four of the young men in the company joined some gold seekers
who were on their way to California, only to return in two years
with a fortune “rather small” compared with their expectations.
Canute found the land around Salt Lake City already taken up.
“The water was very scarce and to get five acres of water right
was an imposibility.” Apostle Benson, who treated Canute as
“a favorite,” told him about some land “rich as a cream pot”
on the other side of the Jordan River. Canute worked the claim
for about two weeks, trying to bring water to it, but became
discouraged and went thirty miles south to settle what became
known by the Book of Mormon name of Lehi. “Now my occupation
was plowing, sowing, making water ditches, and fences.” But
not for long, for in 1852 Brigham Young was to call Canute and
his friend from Sugar Creek, Erik Hogan, now of Bountiful, on
a mission to Norway, where Mormon activity had already begun.

The Norwegian company had encountered Apostle Erastus [61] Snow
and their recent Nauvoo neighbors, John Forsgren and Peter O.
Hansen, in the mountains eastward bound for Scandinavia. The
October general conference of the church just past had renewed
Mormonism’s old determination to carry the gospel to the continent
of Europe. In the half century 1850-1900 Scandinavia was to
send thirty thousand proselytes to the Far West’s latter-day
Zion, a rich harvest from the early planting in Illinois.” {23}

Notes

<1> George P. Dykes to Joseph Smith, May 18, 1843,
in “Journal History,” filed in Historian’s Office, Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. This
record is a loose-leaf chronological compilation, 1830 to
the present, of letters, diary excerpts, church minutes, and
clippings relating to Mormon history. See also Rasmus B. Anderson,
First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 399-408 (Madison,
Wisconsin, 1895); Theodore C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration
to America, 1825-1860, 248 (Northfield, 1931), and Norwegian
Migration to America: The American Transition, 112-114 (Northfield,
1940); Carl M. Hagberg, Den norske misjonshistorie, 55 (Oslo,
198); and Andrew Jenson, “De første norske hellige,”
in Skandinaviens stjerne (Copenhagen), 50: 235-238 (August
1, 1902). A copy of Hagberg’s work is in the John A. Widtsoe
Collection, University of Utah Library, Salt Lake City; a
complete file of Skandinaviens stjerne is to be found in the
Historian’s Office.
<2> Carrie Peterson Tanner, “A Story of the Life of
Canute Peterson as Given by Himself and Some Members of His
Family,” 3. A copy of this manuscript narrative is in the
Historian’s Office. See also “Ellen Sanders Kimball,” in Orson
F. Whitney, History of Utah, 4:67-69 (Salt Lake City, 1902).
<3> Dykes to Smith, May 18, 1843, in “Journal History.”
Micah 4: was a favorite Mormon quotation: “And many nations
shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain
of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he
will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths:
for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem.”
<4> Hagberg, Den norske misjonskistorie, 56.
<5> Goody Hogan, Diary, 5, 6. A copy of this manuscript
journal is in the library of Brigham Young University in Provo,
Utah.
<6> “Historical Sketch of J. E. Forsgren,” in Box Elder
Neu’s (Brigham City. Utah), August 1, 1916; “Hans Christian
Hansen,” in Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia,
2: 766, 4:706 (Salt Lake City, 1914, 1926); Peter O. Hansen,
“Autobiografi,” in Morgenstjernen (Salt Lake City), 3:330-336
(1884). A file of Morgenstjernen is in the Historian’s Office.
<7> J. W. C. Dietrichson, Reise blandt de norske emigranter
i “De forenede nord amerikanske fristater,” 102-108 (Stavanger,
1846, Madison, Wisconsin, 1896); Anderson, First Chapter,
400; Blegen, Norwegian Migration, 1:156, 181, 254, 2: 113;
Gustaf Unonius, A Pioneer in Northwest America, 1841-1858,
1:313 (Minneapolis, 1950).
<8> “Journal History,” May 13. December 31, 1844.
<9> Hogan Diary, 4.
<10> “Journal History,” October 23, 1844. James J. Strang,
who was contending with Brigham Young for the leadership of
the Mormons, was sarcastic about this enterprise. Reviewing
Reuben Miller’s James J. Strang Weighed in the Balance of
Truth, and Found Wanting (Burlington, Wisconsin, 1846), Strang
wrote in Zion’s Reveille (Voree, Wisconsin) of January 14,
1847:
“In five lines writing he gets a stake of Zion organized,
at Norway, Ills, and himself Bishop, and all that without
the intervention or authority of the First Presidency.
“It is probably something new to most of the church that a
Stake of Zion was ever organized in the vicinity of Ottawa,
Ills. It is nevertheless true that at a time when writs and
sheriffs were quite too thick for the convenience of B. Young,
H. C. Kimball, and P. P. Pratt, that they went up to the Norwegian
settlement, a few miles from Ottawa, to live on the fat of
the land, and paid the brethren for all their attentions in
the promise of a stake, from which, how ever, they ordered
the bishop to Nauvoo before any gathering was ever commenced
at their new stake.”
<11> Tanner, “Canute Peterson,” 8.
<12> Tanner, “Canute Peterson,” 15.
<13> Hogan Diary, 7. The account of the Hogan family’s
activities is drawn from various passages throughout the diary.
<14> See the “Chronicles of Voree,” January 31, 1846.
This is a manuscript record that contains the minutes of Strangite
affairs that occurred before the appearance of the Voree Herald
in 1846; the latter became the most important printed source
for the history of the Strangites. The present writer is indebted
to Mr. Dale L. Morgan for calling the Strangite material to
his attention and for making available his microfilm copies
of the manuscript “Chronides of Voree” and the periodicals
Voree Herald, its successor Zion’s Reveille, and the latter’s
successor Gospel Herald, all of which were published in Voree,
Wisconsin. Mr. Morgan’s microfilm copies are filed in the
Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. The most complete
files of the originals of these Strangite periodicals may
be found in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at Madison,
and at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite),
Burlington, Wisconsin. The Strangites use the form “Latter
Day Saints” without the hyphen.
<15> “Chronicles of Voree,” January 31, 1846.
<16> “Conference at the Norwegian Settlement,” in Voree
Herald, 1:8 (May, 1846); “Chronicles of Voree,” April 17,
18, 1846.
<17> Louisa Sanger to James J. Strang, July 15, 1846,
in Strang Papers, Coe Collection, Yale University; Bertha
S. Anderson, Joseph Smith III. 180 (Independence, Missouri,
1952); Anderson, First Chapter, 899; an interview with Joseph
Peterson of Salt Lake City, whose father had worked in the
same shop with Shure Olson; United States Census, Population,
1850, p. 21. Manuscript census schedules for Utah are preserved
in the National Archives at Washington, D.C.; microfilm copies
of these schedules are filed in the Utah State Historical
Society.
<18> Tanner, “Canute Peterson,” 18.
<19> George W. Bratten to Brigham Young, February 26,
1848, in “Journal History” of the same date. “The following
names were given in as those who would support the Twelve
and go to the West: Henry Saba, Magaen [?J Saba, Ira Saba,
Peter Saba, Wilbur Saba, Canute Petersen, Andrew Doll [Dahl],
Hannah Doll, Andrew Doll, jun. Swen Jacobs, Sophia Jacobs,
Iden Jacobs, Levi Lightfoot, Maddy Madison, Goodman Hougas,
Sandria Sanders, Jacob Anderson, Z Baxter, Samuel Bell.”
<20> Tanner. “Canute Peterson,” 21. Incidents in the
journey are drawn from Peterson’s reminiscences in this account.
<21> Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star (Liverpool).
11:864 (1850); a file of this periodical is in the Historian’s
Office. See also “Journal History,” 1849, which records the
following recognizably Scandinavian names-with ages-in Benson’s
camp: Hannah Doll [Dahl], 57; Andrew Doll, 16; Swen Jacobs,
25; John Jacobs, 23; Ellen Jacobs, 18; Shure Oleson, 30; Elizabeth
Oleson, 24; Ola Oleson, inf.; Canute Petersen, 24; Sarah A.
Petersen, 22; Rasmus Rasmussen, 28; Henry Saby, 57; Magla
Saby, 51; Ira Saby, 17; J. Saby, 22; Walber Saby, 16; Peter
Saby, 14; Betsy Saby, 8; Christian flyer, 32. It is not difficult
to recognize the “Saba” of Bratten’s letter as the “Saby”
of “Journal History,” which notes that the “Saby” family had
“3 wagons, 3 horses, 10 oxen; C. Petersen 1 wagon. 6 oxen;
Swen Jacobs 2 wagons, 6 oxen; Hyer 1 wagon, 4 oxen.”
<22> Tanner, “Canute Peterson,” 27.
<23> See the present writer’s “Mormons from Scandinavia,
1850-1900: A Shepherded Migration,” in Pacific Historical
Review (University of California). 23:227-246 (August 1954).